If you missed the Bill Moyers' segment last night on the U.S. attorney purge, including his extended interview with Josh, you can watch it now online.
--David Kurtz
Here we go again. Back in December, the guys over at Powerline were having a hard time remembering any Bush Administration officials who had been touched by scandal. It was such a laughable proposition that we decided to help them out and started compiling a rogues gallery of this scandal-plagued administration. You can see the list that readers helped us come up with here. It's a little out of date now, what with Democratic oversight and all.
With such a long list, you wouldn't think Powerline could so easily forget. But I suppose it's easy to forget what you don't really want to know. Here is part of a Powerline post from today (thanks to TPM Reader WB for the link), about all of the "faux scandals" being played up by the left-wing media:
The truth is that the Bush administration has been extraordinarily scandal-free. Not a single instance of corruption has been unearthed. Only one significant member of the executive branch, Scooter Libby, has been convicted of anything. Whether the jury's verdict was right or wrong, that case was an individual tragedy unrelated to any underlying wrongdoing by Libby or anyone else.
Funny. Just yesterday we learned that a deputy secretary of state resigned because of his ties to the D.C. madam sex scandal and that the chief of staff to the head of the Department of Justice's Criminal Division had resigned because of his alleged personal ties to the Abramoff scandal. That's not to mention the fallout from the U.S. Attorney purge scandal, the guilty plea of the former No. 2 at the Interior Department, also in the Abramoff scandal, and the list goes on.
If you're a hard-core conservative reading Powerline, does this sort of nonsense make you feel better about yourself or about your beliefs? For the uninformed, maybe it offers the assurance that things are okay. For the semi-informed, maybe it comforts them that things aren't as bad as they may seem. At what point does the internal dissonance of those who read and write such garbage exact a personal toll--morally, emotionally, spiritually?
--David Kurtz
To follow up on the post below about the Attorney General Awards, DOJ's highest honor, I couldn't help but notice that one of the recipients of last year's Attorney General Award for Fraud Prevention was Robert E. Coughlin, II.
Coughlin was the chief of staff to the head of DOJ's criminal division until his quiet resignation earlier this month, first reported yesterday, allegedly because he is facing scrutiny in the Jack Abramoff investigation.
The award "recognizes exceptional dedication and effort to prevent, investigate, and prosecute fraud and white collar crimes." Coughlin was part of a team honored for its work on post-Hurricane Katrina fraud.
In September, Coughlin was honored for his work on fraud and white collar crime. By the following April, he was out because of his alleged connections to the one of the largest white collar crime investigations in DOJ's history. Only in the Gonzales Justice Department.
--David Kurtz
Oversight can produce results:
The Justice Department is removing political appointees from the hiring process for rookie lawyers and summer interns, amid allegations that the Bush administration had rigged the programs in favor of candidates with connections to conservative or Republican groups, according to documents and officials.
This nugget also from the Post, is worth following*:
According to a former deputy chief in the civil rights division, one honors hire was a University of Mississippi law school graduate who had been a clerk for U.S. District Judge Charles W. Pickering Sr. about the time the judge's nomination by President Bush to a federal appeals court provoked opposition by congressional Democrats, who contended that Pickering was hostile to civil rights.A few months after he arrived, that lawyer was given a cash award by the department, after he was the only member of a four-person team in the civil rights division who sided with a Georgia voter-identification law that was later struck down by the courts as discriminatory to minorities, according to two former Justice lawyers.
The cash payments are part of the Attorney General's Awards, the highest honor bestowed by the Department of Justice.
Late update: For more on the Pickering clerk*, Joshua Rogers, see Paul Kiel's earlier reporting over at TPMmuckraker.
Correction: While cash payments are associated with some of the Attorney General Awards, it does not appear that Joshua Rogers was the recipient of an Attorney General Award. The nature of the cash payment to Rogers remains unclear. I regret the error.
*Update/Correction: The Post has run the following correction to the piece:
An April 28 A-section article about the Attorney General's Honors Program incorrectly said that one lawyer hired through the program had been a clerk for U.S. District Judge Charles W. Pickering Sr. The lawyer was a summer intern for Pickering while he was in law school.
--David Kurtz
How an incapacitated attorney general spends his time:
For the moment, Gonzales' days will be spent in much the same way they have been for most of the spring: preparing to defend himself before Congress. With the May 10 hearing before Conyers' committee fast approaching, the attorney general is certain to face new questions from members of Congress armed with information gleaned from testimony by McNulty, Moschella, Comey and possibly Goodling. As if that wasn't enough, Gonzales must also prepare for a May 9 Senate Appropriations Committee hearing, in which he'll be asked detailed questions about his management of the rest of the 110,000-person department.
--David Kurtz
Early Bush DOJ brainstorming about avoiding senate confirmation of US Attorneys?
--Josh Marshall
Don't be fooled by the subdued tone and subtle nuance of David Sanger's front page article in this morning's New York Times on the "New Way Forward" in Iraq. It is a milestone in the Bush Administration's public spin of the war, marking the first official acknowledgment that the surge and all the attendant fuss were nothing more than an elaborate stop-gap intended to buy time so that the colossal failure of the President's foreign policy can be pawned off on the next president:
The Bush administration will not try to assess whether the troop increase in Iraq is producing signs of political progress or greater security until September, and many of Mr. Bush’s top advisers now anticipate that any gains by then will be limited, according to senior administration officials.In interviews over the past week, the officials made clear that the White House is gradually scaling back its expectations for the government of Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki. The timelines they are now discussing suggest that the White House may maintain the increased numbers of American troops in Iraq well into next year.
If you've been a regular reader of TPM, you know this is nothing new. We've been saying it in one form or another since late last year, when it became clear that Bush would reject the recommendations of the Baker-Hamilton Iraq Study Group in favor of a policy that can charitably be called more of the same. Here is Josh, for example, writing in January:
[T]he most appropriate name for what the president is planning is neither 'surge' nor even 'escalation' but rather 'punt' -- a strategically meaningless increase in troops meant to allow the president to avoid dealing with the failure of his policy and lay the ground work for getting the next president to take the blame for his epochal screw-up.
For all of 2007, Administration defenders--an ever-dwindling number--have loudly and repeatedly called for opponents of the surge to give the so-called new strategy a chance. Even Republicans who have long supported the President began hedging their bets when the surge was announced. Fine, they said, we'll give you one last shot--but this is it. Minority Leader John Boehner told CNN on January 24 that we would know whether the surge was working in 60-90 days. Hmmm, in other words, we would know by now.
But the Administration has employed several sleights of hand (no surprise there) which are designed to allow it to buy more time. The biggest charade has been the deployment schedule, which has phased in the "surge" over a period of five months. The full contingent of troops won't be on the streets of Baghdad until May. So the surge is really more of a ripple.
The deployment schedule is largely a product of an overextended military. The only way, short of a draft, to increase the number of troops on the ground is to juggle the schedule through a combination of extended and accelerated deployments so that units' time in Iraq overlap. But the Administration will argue, come May, that the new strategy is only then fully implementational. We will be told that we have to give the new strategy a chance to work once all of its components are in place. The period from January to May when we thought we were watching the surge for signs of success was merely prelude, we will be told.
Folks like Boehner will be asked about the deadlines they publicly imposed for success and will explain, with barely concealed impatience, that the clock shouldn't begin running until all the troops are in place. So instead of 60-90 days from January, we should measure from May, which buys them at least until August. Well, September actually. That is when the Pentagon is scheduled to do a "comprehensive review" of the surge for signs of success.
In order to make sure there are sufficient "signs of success" by September to justify pressing ahead, the Administration is leaning on Prime Minister Maliki, upon whose fragile shoulders our entire mission in Iraq now rests, to produce "outputs":
Mr. Bush was careful when he announced his new strategy in January to avoid public estimates of how quickly Mr. Maliki might take steps toward political reconciliation. Even now, White House officials are being careful not to describe with any precision the mix of benchmarks they expect Mr. Maliki to deliver.By the time Ambassador Crocker and General Petraeus complete a comprehensive assessment of progress in September, three months after the troop increase has been fully in place, American officials are hoping that some of the pieces of crucial legislation will have passed.
But Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates found himself pressing Mr. Maliki last week to keep Parliament from taking a two-month summer break. If lawmakers remain in Baghdad, said one senior American official who did not want to be identified because he was discussing internal White House deliberations, “we’ll have some outputs then.”
He added, “That’s different from having outcomes,” drawing a distinction between a sign of activity and a sign of success, which could take considerably longer.
Bush is seeking "outputs" as a means of ensuring eventual "outcomes" that will, he hopes, in the end, lead to "signs of success." It's not exactly Churchillian: We will fight for every output and we will never surrender! In the meantime, Bush will be content with any "sign of activity." And as we've seen before from Bush, in the morbid spectacle he made of Terri Schiavo, any sign of activity, no matter how remote, justifies not pulling the plug.
The somber, measured tone of Sanger's piece in the The Times, without a hint of irony in it, conveys that we are all supposed to just play along with what everyone--from congressional Republicans to Petraeus to the poor grunts on the streets of Baghdad--knows to be a huge charade.
TPM Reader MD gamed out the Administration's strategy way back in December:
It hit me the other day that what the surge is going to accomplish for Bush and Cheney is to take them through these next two years. By the time they can claim to have the extra troops in Baghdad it's gonna be May or June. They'll be there a few months till everyone has to admit that it isn't working . . . then it will be the end of 2007 and the argument will be about whether we should remove some of the surge troops. That will take a few months, at least, and we'll be in the throes of a presidential election. Bush won't want to do anything too "political" at that point, of course, so he'll happily leave it to the new prez to make shitcakes out of shit. And Bush and Cheney will spin it for all it's worth for the rest of their lives...We're right on schedule.
--David Kurtz
As noted below, the 'DC Madam' scandal has now brought down its first big-name DC political figure: Randall Tobias, until about four o'clock this afternoon the head of the US 
Agency for International Development and Director of US Foreign Assistance at the State Department.
Tobias is mounting what I guess we might call the Haggard defense: no sex, just massages.
But let me clip out just a couple grafs from Brian Ross's and Justin Rood's piece at ABC's The Blotter that show just how richly obscene (and not in the sense most people think) this story really is ...
On Thursday, Tobias told ABC News he had several times called the "Pamela Martin and Associates" escort service "to have gals come over to the condo to give me a massage." Tobias, who is married, said there had been "no sex," and that recently he had been using another service "with Central Americans" to provide massages.
Another service "with Central Americans." That's what he's using now. This is the guy in charge of America's international aid and development assistance to countries around the world. ("I was using one service that sent Thai broads. Now I get 'em to send Central Americans.") I'm glad this bozo is showing our best face to the world and clearing up any misunderstandings about exploiting people in the Third World.
Here's another good passage ...
As the Bush administration's so-called "AIDS czar," Tobias was criticized for emphasizing faithfulness and abstinence over condom use to prevent the spread of AIDS.
I'm glad Tobias was coming from a place of genuine principle when he tried to stop people in Africa from using condoms to stop the transmission of AIDS. I guess massages count as safe sex though. Lucky he was only getting massages.
--Josh Marshall
The Kansas City Star's Dave Helling got a quote (sub.req.)from 'resigned' US Attorney Todd Graves.
“I value the years I spent at DOJ (Department of Justice) and the friendships I forged there. But the current environment at the Department can only be described as toxic, and I am very thankful I left…What is going on now in DC is a three-ring circus, and I don’t want to have anything to do with it.”
Remember, today we learned for a fact what we've long suspected: that Graves, the former US Attorney from Kansas City, showed up on the DOJ's firing list not long before he 'resigned' and was replaced by Bradley Schlozman as a non-Senate-confirmed appointment under the USA Patriot Act.
The details get complicated and murky; they can be difficult to follow. But this is the big picture: it now seems clear that before those seven firings on December 7th of last year there was a series of 'soft firings' of US Attorneys through much of 2006.
And Schlozman was a prime architect of the Bush administration's 'vote fraud' scam -- which we'll be discussing more next week.
--Josh Marshall
USAID Administrator and Director of Foreign Assistance Randall Tobias resigns for "personal reasons." Tobias's sudden departure was announced late this afternoon at State.
Late Update: And it was broken by a TPM alum no less. ABCNews' Justin Rood got the story: Tobias was on the DC Madam's customer list. Those were the 'personal reasons' for resigning his position at the State Department.
For more on the DC Madam story, see TPMmuckraker's running coverage.
--Josh Marshall
Another Friday afternoon DOJ Document Dump has just hit the web. Head over to this TPMmuckraker research thread if you'd like to help us wade through it and find the key details.
--Josh Marshall
There appears to be a multi-scandal harmonic convergence this evening with Friday afternoon breaks in several stories. We'll keep you posted.
--Josh Marshall
Not clear what this means. But it's the Gonzales DOJ so ... well, just read (from McClatchy) ...
A senior Justice Department official has resigned after coming under scrutiny in the Department’s expanding investigation of convicted super-lobbyist Jack Abramoff, according to a Justice Department official with knowledge of the case.Making the situation more awkward for the embattled Department, the official, Robert E. Coughlin II, was deputy chief of staff for the criminal division, which is overseeing the Department’s probe of Abramoff.
He stepped down effective April 6 as investigators in Coughlin’s own division ratcheted up their investigation of lobbyist Kevin Ring, Coughlin’s long-time friend and a key associate of Abramoff.
--Josh Marshall
Don Imus has nothing on Rush Limbaugh.
Check out these new racially-charged parodies of Al Sharpton and Barack Obama that Rush is pushing right now with his multi-media empire.
--Greg Sargent
Just out from McClatchy ...
Congressional sources who have seen unedited internal documents say the Bush administration considered firing at least a dozen U.S. attorneys before paring down its list to eight late last year.The four who escaped dismissal came from states considered political battlegrounds in the last presidential election: Missouri, Minnesota, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin.
Two of the four said they resigned voluntarily before the mass firings of U.S. attorneys on Dec. 7. Two continue to serve as federal prosecutors.
The big name here is Todd Graves from Kansas City who 'resigned' to make way for Patriot Act appointee Bradley Schlozman. This one's important since Schlozman is a master of the 'vote fraud' bamboozlement.
More to come on this soon.
--Josh Marshall
Patriot Act-appointee Schlozman heads back to Main Justice with another gig.
--Josh Marshall
Next up: ex-Rep. Hayworth (R-AZ) in the ever-expanding Abramoff investigation.
--Josh Marshall
Yesterday Mitt Romney said catching Osama Bin Laden wasn't worth the money it would cost. The reaction from the media and winger blogospere? Take a guess.
--Greg Sargent
The Justice Department sends Congress a list of the documents that it doesn't want them to see.
--Paul Kiel
I don't normally make a habit of flagging stuff like this. But I really appreciate Bill Moyers' and Co.'s highlighting our work here at TPM. So I wanted to let you know that I'll be appearing this evening in the first regular episode of Moyers' new show Bill Moyers Journal.
Many of you saw and have written in about the show on the press coverage of the lead-up to the Iraq War. But I guess that was technically a 'special' rather than one of the regular segments, of which tonight's is the first.
If you're interested you can find the time and station in your area.
I haven't seen the show myself. So I can't tell you exactly what's included -- here's the online blurb. But I sat down for an interview with Moyers' last week for the show. And they had a crew over here at TPM HQ filming some of what we do. So if you're interested, tune in. Apparently the full show will be online at the Bill Moyers Journal website after it runs on tv.
--Josh Marshall
From a reader with his ears open ...
So. It's Friday, and the Pentagon leaks word that a top al-Qaeda operative has been captured. Or, actually, that he was captured last year, but that he's just been transferred from the custody of the CIA to DoD. Wait, that's not quite right. He was transferred earlier in the week. But still. It's important news. Right?Only here's the thing. When you have a story like this, you don't release it on a Friday. There's nothing time-critical about it. There's no reason to squander the positive headlines on the slowest media day of the week.
Maybe you've already heard something. Or maybe we'll get the word in the next few hours. But I can't think of a surer sign that the administration will be releasing some information later today that it would rather we all ignored. Who knows? It could be a post-Gonzales testimony DoJ document dump. It might be word of another probe into Rove. Maybe the RNC will be turning over some e-mails. But you can take it to the bank - something's coming down the pike.
--Josh Marshall
Today's Must Read: George Tenet shocks the world with the revelations in his new memoir.
--Paul Kiel
With Harry Reid's controversial 'war is lost' quote and with various other pols weighing in on whether we can 'win' or whether it's 'lost', it's a good time to consider what the hell we're actually talking about. Frankly, the whole question is stupid. Or at least it's a very stilted way of understanding what's happening, geared to guarantee President Bush's goal of staying in Iraq forever. A more realistic description is President Bush's long twilight struggle to see just how far he can go into one brown paper bag.
We had a war. It was relatively brief and it took place in the spring of 2003. The critical event is what happened in the three to six months after the conventional war ended. The supporters of the war had two basic premises about what it would accomplish: a) the US would eliminate Iraq's threatening weapons of mass destruction, b) the Iraqi people would choose a pro-US government and the Iraqi people and government would ally themselves wtih the US.
Rationale 'A' quickly fell apart when we learned there were no weapons of mass destruction to eliminate.
That left us with premise or rationale 'B'. But though many or most Iraqis were glad we'd overthrown Saddam, evidence rapidly mounted that most Iraqis weren't interested in the kind of US-aligned government the war's supporters had in mind. Not crazy about a secular government, certainly not wild about one aligned with Israel and just generally not ready to be America's new proxy in the region. Most importantly, those early months showed clear signs that anti-Americanism (not surprisingly) rose with the duration of the occupation.
This is the key point: right near the beginning of this nightmare it was clear the sole remaining premise for the war was false: that is, the idea that the Iraqis would freely choose a government that would align itself with the US and its goals in the region. As the occupation continued, anti-American sentiment -- both toward the occupation and America's role in the world -- has only grown.
I would submit that virtually everything we've done in Iraq since mid-late 2003 has been an effort to obscure this fact. And our policy has been one of continuing the occupation to create the illusion that this reality was not in fact reality. In short, it was a policy of denial.
It's often been noted that we've had a difficult time explaining or figuring out just who we're fighting in Iraq. Is it the Sunni irreconcilables? Or is it Iran and its Shi'a proxies? Or is it al Qaida? The confusion is not incidental but fundamental. We can't explain who we're fighting because this isn't a war, like most, where the existence of a particular enemy or specific danger dictates your need to fight. We're occupying Iraq because continuing to do so allows us to pretend that the initial plan wasn't completely misguided and a mistake. If we continue to run the place a bit longer, the reasoning goes, we'll root out this or that problem that is preventing our original predictions from coming to pass. And of course the longer the occupation continues we generate more and more embittered foes to frame this rationalization around, thus creating an perpetual feedback loop of calamity and self-justification.
It's a huge distortion to say that this means the war was 'lost'. It just means what the war supporters said would happen didn't happen. The premise was bogus. Like I said at the outset, the whole exercise is like getting trapped in a brown paper bag. You can keep going into the bag and into the bag and into the bag and never get out or change anything. Or you can just turn around and walk out of the bag.
Of course, the damage that's been done over the last four years of denial is immense -- damage to ourselves, to the Iraqis, damage to Middle Eastern security and our standing in the world. So walking out of the bag isn't easy and it won't fix things. But the stakes alleged by the White House are largely illusory. Most of the White House's argument amounts to the threat that if we walk out of the bag that we'll have to give up the denial that the White House has had a diminishing percentage of the country in for the last four years. The reality though is that the disaster has already happened. Admitting that isn't a mistake or something to be feared. It's the first step to repairing the damage. What the president has had the country in for four years is a very bloody and costly holding action. And the president has forced it on the country to avoid admitting the magnitude of his errors.
--Josh Marshall
As we've suggested many times over recent weeks, the US Attorney Purge story is much bigger than the eight fired US Attorneys you've already heard about. Now we have another case where a US Attorney in a key swing state was likely forced out in 2006 to be 
replaced by a Gonzales Justice Department flunky under the US Patriot Act. It's looked for some time now like Thomas Heffelfinger, former US Attorney in Minneapolis, was likely pushed aside to make room for the now notorious Rachel Paulose, the then 33 year old whose lavish US Attorney 'coronation' ceremony garnered so much attention earlier this year.
Paulose, you'll also remember, recently made news when her entire senior staff voluntarily stepped down due to her alleged managerial incompetence and dictatorial style -- a blow-out even a crisis intervention from Main Justice couldn't contain.
She's also garnered notice for being a pal of disgraced and defenestrated DOJ appointee Monica Goodling.
In any case, how'd Paulose get her job? To date, her predecessor Heffelfinger has been alternately coy and noncommittal about why he left, though he has recently denied being forced to resign. That however has not silenced speculation in Minneapolis that he was in fact forced out to make room for the rapidly-rising Paulose. And now we have new information from McClatchy that adds a lot of weight to those suspicions. Just around the time Heffelfinger decided to leave his name had turned up on an early version of the DOJ firing list.
Just to be clear, Heffelfinger stills says it's just a coincidence. He told McClatchy today, "I had no indication whatsoever at any point during my service as U.S. attorney that anybody at Justice was less than fully satisfied with my work."
As long as that's what he's saying, it's probably more than enough for DOJ defenders to hang their hats on. But in this case I'm not much for coincidences. Let's put him down as another case of a US Attorney the Gonzales clique wanted gone, who helpfully resigned in short order and was subsequently replaced by a GOP operator like Paulose.
--Josh Marshall
The Dem debates are starting within minutes.
A seasoned campaign professional tells us what the candidates have to accomplish tonight -- and what we should expect from them. His thoughts are here -- let us know what you think.
--Greg Sargent
Bush DOJ appointee Schlozman kicked voting rights ass in civil rights "reign of terror" at Main Justice before heading to Missouri to crack down on Dems!
--Josh Marshall
You probably remember a few weeks ago when NBC's Andrea Mitchell went on the air and announced that the American people supported pardoning Scooter Libby when they actually overwhelmingly opposed it, according to all available polling.
Well, this morning TPM Reader CG caught her at it again, this time with Nancy Pelosi. And we grabbed the clip for a TPMtv Extra.
Take a look ...
--Josh Marshall
"We are one signature away from ending the Iraq War."
The Presidential candidates react to the news that both Houses have now passed the Iraq withdrawal bill.
--Greg Sargent
Are you crazy to think all the recent news on Republican corruption investigations is connected to Al Gonzales and Co. not being able to obstruct them any longer? We think you're on to something. And we run down the evidence in today's episode of TPMtv ...
--Josh Marshall
White House flack Dana Perino: Americans voted for "surge" in the 2006 elections.
--Greg Sargent
Rep. Renzi (R-AZ): Two hundred grand here, two hundred grand there ... who can keep track?
--Josh Marshall
Breaking: Paul McNulty's predecessor, former Deputy Attorney General James Comey will appear before the House Judiciary Committee next Thursday to discuss his role in planning for the US Attorney firings.
Late Update: Most of you probably know Comey as the guy who appointed Pat Fitzgerald to head up the Plame investigation. Also of note, Comey did play some role in early discussions of possibly firing some US Attorneys after the 2004 election. One of the document dumps actually had Comey's proposed list of firees. The telling point, however, is that Comey's list was very different from the one the post-Comey team came up with. His appeared to target incompetent US Attorneys, not ones who made the mistake of indicting Republicans.
--Josh Marshall
From Perino this morning on the GOP campaign briefings violating Hatch Act...
Reporter: How about this political interference with the Hatch Act?Perino: There wasn't political interference within the Hatch Act. What you're talking about is --
Reporter: Use of the government agencies?
Perino: It is perfectly lawful for the political appointees at the White House to provide informational briefings to political appointees at the agencies. No laws were broken, and we provided more information about that last night.
Reporter: Was that all vetted through the Counsel's Office prior to those sorts of sessions happening? What sort of oversight was done within the White House?
Perino: Yes, generally -- because it's not unlawful and it wasn't unusual for informational briefings to be given. They were run by Sara Taylor and Scott Jennings.
Reporter: But there's a higher standard, obviously, at the White House than no laws were broken. Aren't there ethical questions, as well?
Perino: There were no -- what ethical (rules) would have been broken?
Reporter: No, in terms of using federal resources, federal people to encourage people. The allegation is out there that people were being encouraged to help Republicans.
Reporter #2: And targeting certain Democrats --
Perino: There is no prohibition under the Hatch Act of allowing political appointees to talk to other political appointees about the political landscape in which they are trying to advance the President's agenda. None.
Reporter: You say it's not a violation of the Hatch Act.
Perino: Not a violation of law, or of ethics.
Reporter: So why is the Office of Special Counsel investigating it, if you're still saying that it's clearly fine, why would they be investigating?
Perino: You'll have to ask them. You'll have to ask them.
Update: It's like we said over at TPMmuckraker this morning: it's all about plausible deniability.
--Josh Marshall
We're hearing that this morning at the Gaggle, Dana Perino has a new line about those GOP campaign briefings for goverment officials: They're "perfectly lawful" apparently.
--Josh Marshall
Today's Must Read: The entire scheme has been laid out before us. The question now is whether Karl Rove will get away with it.
--Paul Kiel
It's hard to get too surprised about this stuff anymore. But according to the Post, Karl Rove deputies gave GOP campaign briefings to top officials in at least 15 government agencies last year.
Who's vulnerable, who's not and how you can use your agency's resources for the team effort -- that seems to have been the basic idea. Pretty much every department got a briefing. And oddly enough NASA too. That must have been an interesting one.
Then there's this fun graf on DHS ...
At the Department of Homeland Security, spokesman Russ Knocke at first said "there is no indication that any meeting on election targets, congressional districts or candidate support or assistance took place at the department." He then called back to alter that remark, saying he had no indication that such a meeting was held at department "offices." A department official said employees were briefed on "morale" but did not elaborate.
In short, there's simply no end to how deep the corruption goes.
--Josh Marshall
I really don't know whether I find it more painful or amusing to watch David Broder's quickening decline. But I'm going to go with amusing. Because clearly there's some deep streak of evil within me that gets a kick out of watching one man struggle so desperately for relevance and even coherence.
In Thursday's column Broder writes ...
Here's a Washington political riddle where you fill in the blanks: As Alberto Gonzales is to the Republicans, Blank Blank is to the Democrats -- a continuing embarrassment thanks to his amateurish performance.If you answered " Harry Reid," give yourself an A. And join the long list of senators of both parties who are ready for these two springtime exhibitions of ineptitude to end.
So, Gonzales, almost universally judged a liar and an incompetent who has dragged the administration into one of its most politically perilous scandals yet.
Reid, frequently makes off-the-cuff remarks that are anathema to Broderite Beltway insiders.
Sounds about even, I guess. But I think I'll take Reid.
People think of Broder as the 'Dean' of the Washington press corps because of things he did in the 60s and 70s. But the man he is today is much more a product of the long conservative ascendancy of the last three decades -- an ascendancy still very much alive in the town's journalistic and editorial elite. You can hear the animus more and more sharply in this columns as his inability to grasp the political moment becomes more and more clear.
--Josh Marshall
TPM Reader DH on Rudy and the Dems ...
All of the Democratic responses to Giuliani's "white flag" fear appeal were inept -- unfortunately and somewhat surprisingly, Dean's "should be ashamed of himself" was the worst. The opposite reaction would have been best. No advice on how Rudy should feel, instead simply pointing out that this is the real Giuliani, a Bush clone employing the same failed rhetoric to prop up the same disastrous ideas. Who wants another 4 years of that?Americans believe Giuliani is different, a leader, a maverick, brave. But Rudy's constant pandering to the Bush hard line on Iraq and defense issues presents a fantastic opportunity for Democrats to pin the Bush label on him, a scarlet letter that has already brought down one GOP front-runner and could well work its magic again, if the Democrats simply point out the obvious connection.
--Josh Marshall
The Times weighs in on the Renzi/Charlton chapter of the US Attorney Purge story.
--Josh Marshall
After meeting with AG Gonzales, Sen. Pryor (D-AR) still thinks Gonzales is a liar and should resign.
--Josh Marshall
Is David Broder's column tomorrow really going to make the case that Harry Reid is as "inept" as Alberto Gonzales?
--Greg Sargent
While we collect your submissions for today's little contest, it's worth remembering that this isn't the first Administration to question the patriotism of its critics. This morning at TPMCafe Todd Gitlin unintentionally anticipated Perino, pulling a quote from the late great David Halberstam writing in 2004 of the sad resonance between today's patriotism debate and the attacks he experienced as a result of his skeptical reporting on Vietnam. Check it out.
--Andrew Golis
Quite a few of you have been writing in asking: Why the sudden explosion of movement on the Abramoff and other GOP corruption investigations? Is it tied in some way to the Purge story? It's always hard to infer just what the delays and speed-ups in 
these investigations mean. Most of the big developments we don't know about until long after the investigation is completed. Sometimes we never know. And that leaves us like the proverbial blind men and the elephant, each speculating based on our little patch of facts with little understanding of the big picture.
That said, there's been such an avalanche of developments in recent days and weeks, that I think it's now quite reasonable to conclude that the turnaround is related to the fact that Gonzales and his crew are flat on their backs and aren't able to block them any more. This is the sort of question or charge people only make sheepishly and with some embarrassment. I've been reluctant to come to this conclusion as well. But now I think there are solid reasons to believe this is true.
It may seem like a leap. But there's more circumstantial evidence for it than you might think.
We already know, for instance, that Main Justice made Carol Lam wait months for permission to issue indictments against the crooks and bribers in the Cunningham investigation. Today we learned that DOJ sources are coming forward to say that Main Justice was playing a very similar game in Arizona with the Renzi investigation. And remember, that US Attorney, Paul Charlton, got canned just like Lam.
We now have some good evidence of a pattern of 'soft' obstruction of Republican corruption investigations by officials at Main Justice -- in the Cunningham-Lewis-Wilkes-Foggo investigation and the Renzi probe. If that's their MO, it shouldn't surprise us to learn they've done the same in the Abramoff probe. Nor should it surprise us that Gonzales's slow-motion fall -- along with the resignations of Sampson, Goodling and others -- is opening up the flood gates.
--Josh Marshall
Below we posted a clip of White House spokesperson Dana Perino claiming that no one at the White House has ever 'played the patriotism card' against the Democrats in the Iraq debate. We're looking for examples from TPM Readers that show Perino is pretty much lying through her teeth. If you can think of examples, please send them in.
But that's not how Democrats themselves should be responding. Make no mistake: complaining that the other side is questioning your patriotism telegraphs weakness.
Democrats should just hit right back on how President Bush has been helping Osama bin Laden for almost six years. Sounds harsh. But it's true. Consider the facts. President Bush had bin Laden trapped in the mountains of Tora Bora. But he let bin Laden get away because Bush wanted to focus on Saddam Hussein instead. The president and the White House tried to lie about this during the 2004 election. But since then the evidence has become overwhelming. President Bush decided to let bin Laden get away so he could get ready to attack Saddam Hussein. So pretty much anything bin Laden does from here on out is on President Bush. And how about Iraq? President Bush has screwed things up so badly that he's created a whole new generation of recruits for bin Laden. He's created a whole new army for bin Laden. Not by being tough but by being stupid. And by being too much of a coward to admit his mistakes once it was obvious that the occupation of Iraq was helping bin Laden specifically and the jihadist agenda in general.
After half a decade, the verdict is pretty clear: President Bush has been the biggest ally Osama bin Laden has. He's helped bin Laden at pretty much every turn -- even if only by his own stupidity, incompetence and cowardice. And when the next big terrorist attack comes, we can thank President Bush for helping make it happen.
--Josh Marshall
The Abramoff investigation continues to move forward. Next up: Tom DeLay's former bag man, Ed Buckham.
--Paul Kiel
John Edwards to Rudy: A Democratic President, not a Republican one, will keep us safer.
--Greg Sargent
Extraordinary. Rupert Murdoch's New York Post completely rewrites Associated Press story to slime Harry Reid and the Dems' Iraq plan.
--Greg Sargent
This should be a fun contest. White House spokesperson Dana Perino just said no one in the White House has ever 'played the patriotism' card in the Iraq debate. We'll have video shortly.
Can you think of any examples? We'll make a contest out of it.
Late Update: Here's a little White House ridiculousness update. You'll see in the video that Perino claims that yesterday Harry Reid called Dick Cheney a "dog" and used this as an example of the reckless attack rhetoric being used by the Democrats. I must confess that sounded a bit rough to me too. But we looked into it and what Reid said was that Cheney was an "attack dog" for the White House.
--Josh Marshall
Ouch. Sens. Pat Leahy (D-VT) and Arlen Specter (R-PA) to Gonzales: maybe if you try a little harder, you might be able to remember something.
--Paul Kiel
Yesterday we showed you Karl Rove's speech about the 'hotspots' of 'vote fraud' around the country. See it here if you didn't catch it yesterday. Today we look at just where Rove was getting his information. Hint: it has something to do with sock-puppeteer John Lott ...
Update: We've got a side-by-side comparison of Rove's words and Lott's words over at TPMmuckraker.
--Josh Marshall
House Judiciary Committee authorizes immunity for Monica Goodling.
Update: We've added details about the Republicans who objected, and when Goodling is likely to be interviewed by investigators.
--Paul Kiel
“Rudy Giuliani today has taken the politics of fear to a new low."
Obama blasts Rudy's claim that Americans would be safer under GOP President.
Update: We've now added Hillary's statement, too.
--Greg Sargent
We now have an advance copy of the full speech Rahm Emanuel will deliver later this morning excoriating the Bush administration on everything from Katrina to Iraq.
--Greg Sargent
Earlier this weekend, we told you to keep an eye out for news about Bradley Schlozman, who was up until recently the U.S. attorney for western Missouri. Here's something to give you an idea of how he operates: the most important qualification a lawyer can have, apparently, is whether he/she is a Republican.
--Paul Kiel
Today's Must Read: more on the Rick Renzi front. The Wall Street Journal reports that, as U.S. Attorney Paul Charlton's office tried to push the investigation forward, his bosses in Washington delayed progress on the case for months.
--Paul Kiel
So it looks like Rep. Rick Renzi (R-AZ) is tied up in the US Attorney Purge scandal after all. And the AP has the story.
This gets a bit complicated but here goes.
Purged US Attorney 
Paul Charlton was talking to House investigators this afternoon when he made an important revelation. Weeks before election day 2006, word leaked to the press in Arizona that Charlton's office was investigating Renzi. Renzi's top aide Brian Murray then called Charlton's office and asked Charlton's spokesman, Wyn Hornbuckle.
Unlike what happened with David Iglesias, Charlton's chief investigator did report the contact to the Department of Justice, as DOJ regs dictate.
Now, here's the key: after all Congress's document and information requests to DOJ, the Justice Department had not revealed the Renzi-Charlton contact. For some reason, they've held that back.
The AP sources that to a House Judiciary Committee official and I've also confirmed with House Judiciary investigators that the DOJ failed to give this information to congressional investigators.
Renzi's guy Murray released this statement this evening ...
"Reports that I called Wyn Hornbuckle, press secretary to Paul Charlton are true. I called Mr. Hornbuckle seeking information about press accounts which appeared just weeks before election-day, alleging a pending indictment. I left him a message asking for information about these allegations, but I was called back and told they would not comment."
So basically what we have here is a classic scandal harmonic convergence -- new nuggets about the Renzi scandal and the revelation that another of the US Attorney firings may be tied to an investigation of a Republican lawmaker. At a minimum, the DOJ has concealed critical information about the story.
And one other detail to add to the mix. Remember that two weeks after his dismissal, Charlton emailed his superiors at the Department of Justice asking how to handle questions over whether his firing was tied to his investigation of Rep. Renzi (R-AZ).
--Josh Marshall
"The Bush Administration has redefined the famous challenge of President Kennedy’s inaugural address. Instead of `Ask not what your country can do for you,' it has become `ask what your government can do for our party.'"
That's what Rahm Emanuel will say tomorrow in a speech his aides are billing as a broad indictment of the administration's conduct on everything from the Attorney Purge to Iraq. We've got advance excerpts of Emanuel's remarks for you to check out right now.
--Greg Sargent
Resigning from one House committee was so much fun, Rep. Renzi (R-AZ) decides to resign from another.
Late Update: Hmm, according to The Politico Renzi has asked to be dropped from the GOP's big House Republican incumbent protection program. So maybe he's thinking it's a different house he's going to next year.
And I hear there may be more to come on the Renzi front this evening.
--Josh Marshall
Isn't it enough for the RNC to run one cable news network. They've got to run CNN too?
Headline now running on CNN: "Cheney attacks defeatist Dem plan"
Late Update: It gets even better on the story page where they spell 'defeatist' with a third 'e'.
--Josh Marshall
Wanna see Karl Rove explain where the vote fraud 'hotspots' are across the country and how many US Attorneys from those 'hotspots' got canned?
We dug up the video of an April 7th 2006 speech Rove gave to the Republican National Lawyers Association in which Rove gives a run-down of six vote fraud 'hotspots'. Of those six 'hotspots', the US Attorneys from three ended up on the chopping block.
Take a look.
--Josh Marshall